Greer Grammer gives a lovely, luminous performance in this week's DVD release, "Emma's Chance," a family-friendly story of a high school girl whose prank gets her assigned to community service at an farm , based on the real-life Red Bucket Equine Rescue in California. In an interview, Grammer talked about learning to work with the horses and the best advice on acting she got from her father, "Frasier" star Kelsey Grammer.
"I love horses. I think they are beautiful. I've always loved them and I've always wanted to ride but I danced my whole life and it was so time-consuming that I didn't really have room to ride." To prepare for "Emma's Chance" she had riding lessons before filming began, and was able to get comfortable on a horse, though "there were a couple moments that were really scary. But I tried to ride as much as I could while doing the movie. I fed them lots of treats so they liked me for that! We filmed the whole movie at the Red Bucket pretty much and the horses that I was riding were all there. I had a trainer and I was riding her horse and so she helped me get accustomed to her. I was giving her her favorite treats and riding those horses whenever I could outside of filming. What I think was more hard honestly was the fact that these horses are not movie trained. So there's a lot of equipment and there's a lot of people and there's a lot of things moving around that the horses just aren't used to. So I had to be on top of the horses and make sure that they were all right. I had to tell the director when the horse was uncomfortable because you can feel it. Anyone who rides a horse knows that you are very connected and I could feel any time they were getting antsy or scared or just uncomfortable and they are not used to being on for 14 hours a day."
Her character had to deal with not just one mean girl in the movie but three -- one a friend who put her under a lot of pressure, on at the stable who seemed to resent her, and one she competed with. Working with the horses helped her gain the courage and understanding to stand up to them. "The first mean girl is her friend so it's a little bit more of a tough place for her because she wants to be liked. Through Red Bucket she learned that she doesn't need the approval so much, that there's something more important, fighting for those horses is more important to her than just going to a school dance. The second one is hard because Emma is out of her element. But through Red Bucket she has learned a lot of confidence working with the rescue horses and she knows her relationship with the one named Chance is strong. So I think she just depends on that and then they win and they get through it, nothing else matters."
Emma's growing confidence also helps her understand her feelings for a boy who is interested dating her, and this is a welcome film for young people that does not rely on the typical romantic happy ending. "I think every girl growing up deals with somebody who is in their friend group but is not a boyfriend. How do you do that? How do you gently let somebody down or gently say other things are more important without losing them as a friend? And that was something that Emma and Jacob were able to do because he liked her and she liked him but she didn't like him, like him. She found a way to deal with that. But it's also showing that there are things that are more important than boys. With a lot of shows and movies especially that are for younger viewers, they don't necessarily tell you that. They don't always say there's something more important than finding a boy or finding somebody to fall in love with. This movie shows Emma's love for horses and how she really found herself through that. And that's what is most important for her."
Grammer says that she got two important pieces of advice about acting. "The first is super generic and it's something they teach you in the most basic acting classes which is: acting is reacting. You have to listen. That was something that I struggled with for a long time as an actress. I always knew my lines but I wasn't listening to the other person. I was just listening for my cue. I wasn't present. So now I try to listen more so than speak. I try to always make sure that my lines are being driven from a genuine place because of what the person is saying in front of me. The second thing is just make sure that you love it. This is something my dad told me: it's not a job that you just decide you want to do to be famous or to make money. You need to feel like you have to do it. The only thing I want to do is tell stories and be present. So I think the best advice is make sure you love this job because it's not easy. It's very hard every single day. And the yeses are far fewer than the nos. So you have to make sure that you truly love it. And I do."